Dusenberry, love to see a few photos if you get a chance. Also, can you measure how high you set your platter from the front opening ( distance to bottom of platter ) and then measure how much space there is between the back of the platter and the heat shield. I thought that they designed it with not enough space to allow heat to come up there and reworked mine, I wonder if they moved the bracket location to solve that as well.

Dusenberry, love to see a few photos if you get a chance. Also, can you measure how high you set your platter from the front opening ( distance to bottom of platter ) and then measure how much space there is between the back of the platter and the heat shield. I thought that they designed it with not enough space to allow heat to come up there and reworked mine, I wonder if they moved the bracket location to solve that as well.

Sorry Barry, I must have missed where you reworked that area....it is tight back there and I'm wondering how you created space to open that up back there. Split the shield and added material?

CB, the brackets are little U pieces of metal, I bent the one on the front right so the heat shield could be as close to the outer shell as possible, and put an extension to the heat shield on the left side, otherwise it would not reach that bracket, and in the back, the shield does not rest in the U, instead it sits behind it. I tried to take some photos, not sure if they are any help. I was playing around with different heights, and found that as I raised the platter around an 1 off the front ledge, the platter would scrape the heat shield on the rear, so I moved it to the right, to let the heat shield catch more of the heat from the burner.

I tried some bacon last night and while I saw it sizzling and am pretty sure it got hot enough to kill any thing that would make me sick, it did not get crispy. I will pre-cook that going forward, but wasn't sure about sausage. Thanks.

So I got the Blackstone itch from reading all these posts and was going to order online after work today.I planned to have it delivered to my nearest Lowe's, which is about 1/2 mile down the street, so I could check that the stones were intact. Lo and behold -- they had 4 in stock!! It took about 30 seconds to get there!

They were very cool about inspecting the stones before I bought it and the stones seem to be packed pretty well.Not sure if this is different than earlier versions, but now they're taped up and sandwiched between large Styrofoam disks, inside the main body.

Can't wait to try it and thanks in advance to all you BS'ers that have blazed the trail and shared your learnings!!

Longtime stalker first time poster. I recently purchased the Blackstone Pizza oven after seeing the crazy success everyone has achieved on this site. Anyways as most have encountered, both stones were broken upon receipt of the package from UPS. I don't believe it was the delivery services fault though since the stones were packed poorly with a single block of styrofoam inside the cavity of the oven. I think it would've been more likely to survive if they used bubble wrap and a separate cardboard box or two. Anyways the replacements have arrived today and hopefully I'll fire it up later tonight with some successful results. If so pictures will be posted, if not I'll slither back into the darkness of this forum

Any advice you can give to this native NY'er who loves NY style and Neapolitan pizza would be most appreciated!

Good luck Anthony, my only advice is not to be too put-off if your first effort isn't stellar, I know mine certainly wasn't.

I would preheat with the flame on lowish until the floor is about 750-770, then launch and immediately open the flame to full. This should give a pretty quick intense bake with reasonable top/bottom balance. Bring the flame back down to 'idle ' between pizzas.

And if you haven't already, look up the simple mods you can do to improve things. In particular the heat deflector is really helpful for top heat balance.

Anthony, do you have an IR thermometer ? It makes life much easier, the thermometer that comes with the oven is not of much use. I launch at around 600 to 650 for my pizza, and would guess that is a good starting point for NY style, YMMV

Good point about the thermometer there Barry - the built-in one isn't nearly as useful as having an IR one. If you don't have an IR thermometer I guess you will have to use the built-in one. I think the built-in thermo reads something like 350 when I launch, perhaps a bit over.

Here are pix of mine that I picked up this week at Lowe's.I thought it was packed really well, both stones were intact.Assembly was a breeze and I thought the fitment was very good for all the pieces.The only thing I had to do was to re-tap one of the handle bolt holes -- it was pretty sloppy and the bolt required a lot of torque to make any progress.Once I re-tapped it, it worked great.

Anthony, do you have an IR thermometer ? It makes life much easier, the thermometer that comes with the oven is not of much use. I launch at around 600 to 650 for my pizza, and would guess that is a good starting point for NY style, YMMV

I actually have a Fluke thermal cam, so I'll have some very interesting pictures to show in the near future. They should be able to provide not only better cooking but more efficient ways to trap the heat in the oven and show where possible deficiencies may lie.

Thanks Gags, it was a bit of a disappointment but kind of expected cause you guys gave me a great heads-up on it. I decided to go with GriddleGuru over Lowes to avoid sales tax, but unfortunately that cost me the expense of finding broken stones. On the flip side shipping with the guru is still free and costs a total of $369.99 presently, not too shabby especially when compared to Amazon. More importantly though how are you identifying this oven as a "Gen2"? It does say patio oven on the box and documentation, but how is this different than the 1st generation?

PS Gags, your stones were packaged MUCH better then mine, thanks for the photos. My box had a single 4"x 6" block of styrofoam above the two stones and a thin sheet of styrofam underneath. To put it mildly it was a joke. Monkeys would have packaged it better.

I actually have a Fluke thermal cam, so I'll have some very interesting pictures to show in the near future. They should be able to provide not only better cooking but more efficient ways to trap the heat in the oven and show where possible deficiencies may lie.

Anthony, I bet you have more readers than just me salivating over thermal cam pictures. Post 'em and you'll be my newest, best friend.Dave